Why Musicians Need An Awesome Audio Engineer
For the independent recording artist, sounding great isn't a rarity only available to major label artists anymore - it is a necessity. Music sales may have tapered, but that doesn't mean that recorded music is going away any time soon. Far from it. More music is being consumed on more devices by more fans than ever before in history! Musicians are making their music available on internet and satellite radio, online music streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Deezer, and YouTube, selling on direct-to-fan sites such as CD Baby, Bandcamp, and ReverbNation, and still pushing sales through ‘traditional' online retailers such as iTunes and Amazon MP3. Simply put, there is no excuse for an artist to put out poor recordings.
For some people, audio engineers are still a mystery. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of music, creating false, auto-tuned, machines out of untalented artists. This, however, is far from fact. Every recording, no matter the type, gets handled by a recording engineer, mix engineer, and mastering engineer. The recording engineer utilizes many of microphones and technique to accurately capture and record the artist's performance as it occurs in the recording studio. The mix engineer takes all of the separate music tracks and crafts the music to sound convincing and convey the song's emotion. He sets correct levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds creative effects where possible to enhance the artist's vision. Finally, the mastering engineer uses special equipment and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the music for final release and ensure the sound plays back well on a variety of playback systems. "While many audio techniques can enhance the final production, we engineers are not magicians and can't replace a poor performance or terrible recording," says Scott of Virtual Mix Engineer.
Recorded music is more often used as promotional vessel for artists and labels. The big dough currently is in touring, publishing, sync placements, and merchandising. When a fan connects with an artist's music, they'll listen to their records, tweet, and share the music with their friends. The fans want to support the artist and buy tickets to their shows, purchase apparel, and follow and interact with the band through social media. As the artist grows in popularity, their music may be chosen for sync placements in film and TV, which not only provides great exposure, it also pays quite well. To make it to this stage however, it all begins with well written song and quality recording.
The rise of do-it-yourself recording has led to more artists releasing music than ever before. With a powerful laptop, some mics, a DAW, and a little knowledge, anyone can create and release music. One area where many artists fall short is failing to recognize their weaknesses in audio engineering. An experienced engineer has the right equipment, but most importantly the knowledge to make a recording reach its full potential. Though it can be difficult for an artist, letting go and trusting your engineer will take your recordings to the next level and help you stand out from the others. Fans are instantly attracted to a well-written and performed song that sounds like a hit.
Spend a good amount of time in pre-production, ensuring your composition and arrangement are as solid as possible. Then and only then, get into the best studio you can afford to record your basic tracks. Hire a local or online mixing engineer within your budget whose work and personality you like, and tweak the mixdown until you're happy. Lastly, send the songs off to the mastering engineer for that final polish. Once your record is complete, you can get the music into multiple outlets and into the ears of your listeners and fans.
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